FitProhttp://template1.fitprosites.com
The #1 Website for Fitness ProfessionalsMon, 04 Mar 2013 20:17:39 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.8What Role Does Nutrition Play in Our Health?http://template1.fitprosites.com/what-role-does-nutrition-play-in-our-health/
Thu, 20 Dec 2012 23:48:29 +0000http://fitprotemplate.mypresscoders.com/?p=21Nutrition as it applies to our daily lives means that we take in what we need to maintain our body’s healthy state. Nutrition has become an important word thanks to the involvement of the USDA in our daily food requirements, and the FDA’s involvement in determining what is and is not dangerous for us to consume.
What about eating habits? What about vitamins? What role does our daily intake play in our health? More than you have been lead to believe or understand. The body’s ability to remain well under anything other than ideal conditions is a direct result of the nutrition received on a daily basis. The mind’s ability to remain well is, again, a direct result of our nutritional intake. For instance, the human brain doesn’t develop well without the necessary input of protein in our daily diet. No protein, no intelligence.

Nutrition refers to the nurturing of our body, in our ability to keep it healthy and functioning as it is supposed to do. Our ability to provide the body with all the necessary food, vitamins, and minerals so that we continue to thrive in our daily life processes.

How do we determine that we are providing the essential nutritional needs? That knowledge comes by educating ourselves about what our individual needs are, the needs of our family, and then taking that knowledge and applying it to the foods we buy, that we prepare, and that our families consume.

Health is taught as a science course, and addresses matters of personal hygiene, diseases, and the broad spectrum of health as it applies to the masses. No individual attention is given to how to attain optimal health via our eating habits. It’s funny that we skip the most important, fundamental building block to good health: our nutritional and caloric consumption in our food. I personally believe we should have the field of nutrition and physical activity married into something combined to provide every person that enters the school system with a personal knowledge of their bodies’ needs, caloric, and nutritional, so that they complete their education with mental and physical competencies, as well as analytical and mathematical competence.

Nutrition is a concept that should be as important to our educational process as our ability to count. The ability to recognize our nutritional requirements, find the foods we need to fulfill those requirements, and differentiate between healthy food consumption and “unhealthy” eating habits is not an option. Not for a healthy, happy, long, and quality life.

What we should absorb as we travel along life’s daily path is a way to incorporate good nutrition into our lifestyle. There is generally just as much room for good as there is bad, it just so happens that bad nutritional habits hold more appeal.

Bad nutrition receives more advertising dollars than healthy nutritional options, and is often more visible. But that doesn’t mean it’s any easier, more convenient, or cheaper. Habits, generally take about two weeks to make the switch from conscious action to unconscious thought. Two weeks is not long, it’s not long at all for decisions that will affect you for the rest of your life. It’s also not long for the potential reward that comes from setting an example your children can follow, and you can be proud for them to follow. You teach them daily about the good habits you want them to develop, and then you demonstrate a bad one in your nutrition choices.

C’mon, mom and dad, let’s practice what we preach.

]]>Fitness and Wellnesshttp://template1.fitprosites.com/fitness-and-wellness/
Thu, 20 Dec 2012 23:47:32 +0000http://fitprotemplate.mypresscoders.com/?p=20You pick up the magazines each day, and you’re bombarded with health and fitness information. Advertisements and articles that are designed to impart much needed information to the reader about the state of fitness and health in America today, and what we as responsible citizens should do.
I want you to stop, and think for just one moment. How do you determine your current fitness and wellness levels? Does your regular doctor impart this information as you visit, does he inquire each time you go if you believe yourself to be fit and well? Probably not. Nor does he give you any method for determining the status on your own. Fitness centers abound in this country, and most are staffed with counselors who can test your fitness level. What about your wellness level? Are they one and the same? They are not one and the same, yet they rely heavily on each other to keep you healthy.

Thanks to the advances in modern medicine, the average person’s life span now exceeds seventy years. If you stop to think, that’s quite a long time to walk around on this earth. Along with the wonderful life expectancy increases, however have come the detrimental effects of overeating and unhealthy eating. It seems that as we advance in one area, we regress in others. This doesn’t have to be so, however. Reaching a place of responsibility, where we combine our physical health, with our wellness enhances those extra years of life.

Being fit and being well are totally different conditions. Your wellness rating is dependent upon your immune system, and what vitamins, supplements, and nutrition you provide for your immune system. Fit people can sometimes be unwell. And well people can sometimes be unfit. However, when you do combine the two, and use sound principles based on clean living, exercise, and healthy eating, you attain a state of equilibrium where you are both fit and well. It is comparable to the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang. The balance that must exist in the whole relies heavily on the balancing of the halves.

The wonderful state that is attained however, when we are both fit and well, is one of the joys of being alive. The energy levels that we experience are beyond compare, and the happiness we feel during our moments of physical triumphs, help us to put life in perspective. That’s an accomplishment we pass along to our children in the example that we set before them. We are true practitioners of the philosophies that we preach.

The example we provide for our family, our children especially, speaks volumes to them about their own responsibilities in maintaining their health. Being healthy is a true combination of wellness and fitness, body and mind. Our spirit, soul, or inner voice is a benefactor in this experience, also. Truly well and fit minds and bodies are better followers of their spirit, and spend more energy on the wellness of their spiritual aspect, also. Spirituality is a way of assuring ourselves of a renewing, and rebirth of ourselves as caring humans. Wellness encompasses our state of being, mind, and health. It is a condition of the whole. The joining of wellness and fitness in our life is a condition of the mind, body, and soul.

]]>Are You Fit?http://template1.fitprosites.com/are-you-fit/
Thu, 20 Dec 2012 23:46:34 +0000http://fitprotemplate.mypresscoders.com/?p=19Fitness refers to ability of the body to function with vigor and alertness. Nutrition refers to the nurturing of our body, in our ability to keep it healthy and functioning as it is supposed to do. Our ability to provide the body with all the necessary food, vitamins, and minerals so that we continue to thrive in our daily life processes. But do we know if we are really fit?

How do we tell?
First, you might want to look at your exercise habits, if there are any. If there aren’t any exercise routines to examine, no fitness. Everyone, no matter what their age, benefits from exercise. It keeps our bodies conditioned, our mental sharpness working at top speed, and thanks to the physical aspect, we get a boost to our cardio health, extra calorie burn, and more oxygen to those cells!

Do you take in more calories than your body needs? Are you supplementing your vitamins and minerals to make sure you are getting your recommended daily allowances? If you’re not making the most basic of efforts to take care of your nutritional needs, you aren’t a fit individual. You may not look sick, you may not have any noticeable symptoms of ill-health, but you’re not the fit and toned individual you could be.

What about the stress levels in your life? Do work in an environment with high levels of stress? Is your personal life a source of comfort or does it add to your stress levels? Do you engage in some form of stress-relieving activity? Stress is the number on contributor to heart attacks and strokes, since they manage to speed up the affect of the real culprits. Stress is basically an out of control situation for most adults today. We manage to schedule every moment of our free time, and leave ourselves with no time for quiet reflection, or time to deal with life’s unexpected emergencies.

Fitness requires us to examine more than just our exercise routine. The mere definition of fitness refers to the body’s ability to meet physical stresses. That includes coping with our day to day life, getting from the beginning of the day to the end, without being worn completely out. In order to be truly fit, we find ways to rid ourselves of built up stress, the kind that begins to affect our muscles, muscle tone, and composition. Massages are the best cure for ridding our bodies of the stress buildup that can occur, even with exercise regimens and detract from our overall fitness.

Exercises that demand total body involvement are the best for maintaining and improving your level of fitness most effectively. Running, swimming, jogging, dancing, cycling, and very brisk walking are some of the more popular total body involvement exercises.

There are so many occasions to stop and question our efforts at maintaining optimal health, that we usually don’t even take the time to begin the examination. But it is beneficial to our overall health, the quality and quantity of our life, to make every effort to be fit, healthy, individuals.